Thomas Hoenig, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, is cementing his reputation as the best friend of savers with money in the bank. Hoenig, who has a seat on the Fed's interest-rate committee, on Thursday called for the central bank to raise its benchmark short-term rate to 1% "by the end of summer," from its current range of zero to 0.25%. Hoenig has been agitating all year for the Fed to begin boosting interest rates, arguing that the economic recovery was sustainable and that the central bank risked setting the scene for high inflation if it kept rates too low for too long.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve is considering tougher rules for big banks to keep credit flowing in case of another financial crisis, Fed Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen said Tuesday. Although officials from the Fed and regulatory agencies approved more stringent requirements for the eight largest banks last week, Yellen said additional measures might be needed to keep short-term credit markets from freezing up during stressful financial conditions. "In 2007 and 2008, short-term creditors ran from firms such as Northern Rock, Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros., and from money market mutual funds and asset-backed commercial paper programs," Yellen said in a video speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's financial markets conference.

WASHINGTON - Brutal winter weather contributed to a downturn in job growth and other economic data, raising questions about the strength of the recovery and testing the Federal Reserve's resolve in unwinding its key bond-buying stimulus program. Fed policymakers will have another month of data to consider when they next meet in mid-March. But if the views of John C. Williams are any indication, the Fed is likely to hold course. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, one of the Fed's 12 district banks, Williams has a seat at the mahogany table where top Fed officials meet regularly to discuss the economy and make policy decisions.

WASHINGTON -- Top Federal Reserve officials said financial markets overreacted to Chairwoman Janet Yellen's comments last week indicating the central bank could start raising interest rates early next year. In speeches and interviews, the officials stressed that Fed policy on its near zero short-term interest rates hadn't changed and that rates would remain low for a long period of time. "I don't think the Fed changed its position," Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, told CNBC-TV Tuesday.

John A. Doede has increased his stake in San Diego-based Crown Bancorp from 10.48% to 12.24%, or 79,727 common shares. Doede, who was given approval by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to acquire control of Crown, purchased 24,500 shares between May 16 and May 23 for from $4 to $4.75 each, or a total of $116,000, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Bram Goldsmith: Maverick Banker to Stars" (July 21) omits any mention of Jay Kasler, my father-in-law, who was the founder and first president and later the first chairman of City National Bank in 1954. His lifelong ambition was to own a family bank. He and I visited the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco in 1952 and were advised to start with a board representing various segments of the community in which we lived and not a family bank. After conferring with Justice Lester Wm. Roth, the City National Bank was founded with Kasler its chairman and Al Hart as President.

President Obama plans to name Janet Yellen to serve as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, where she would play a crucial role in shaping monetary policy for the nation's banking system. Yellen, 63, is a former member of the Fed's Board of Governors and has served as president and chief executive of the 12th District Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco since 2004. She will be appointed Thursday, according to a source who requested anonymity in order to speak about the candidates in advance of the official announcement.

WASHINGTON -- Top Federal Reserve officials said financial markets overreacted to Chairwoman Janet Yellen's comments last week indicating the central bank could start raising interest rates early next year. In speeches and interviews, the officials stressed that Fed policy on its near zero short-term interest rates hadn't changed and that rates would remain low for a long period of time. "I don't think the Fed changed its position," Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, told CNBC-TV Tuesday.

Regional Fed Bank Kills Report on Disclosure: The Federal Reserve Bank, facing pressure on Capitol Hill to open up its policies to greater scrutiny, quashed an article on a study that found little impact from quicker disclosure of its decisions. A spokeswoman at the St. Louis Fed cited "the timing of the (congressional) hearings and the sensitivity of the issue."

Re "Boom and bust: It's the American way," Opinion, July 20 Jane Kamensky's history of the first American banking collapse may be accurate, but she shows profound ignorance when she states that "we're better off than the first generation of over-leveraged Americans. We have a strong central bank." In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank is the problem, and for much the same reason that Andrew Dexter Jr.'s banks were the problem in 1809: There is no gold backing dollars printed since 1971, the year that the United States unilaterally went off the gold standard.

WASHINGTON -- Janet L. Yellen, who broke the Federal Reserve's glass ceiling, marks two more milestones Wednesday, wrapping up her initial policymaking meeting as chairwoman then facing reporters' questions for the first time since taking office last month. The Fed chair's quarterly news conferences have drawn great attention since her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, began holding them in 2011 to improve public understanding of the central bank's actions. Now Yellen takes over the tradition, which adds an additional challenge to the job as financial markets try to interpret every answer for signs of the Fed's direction.

Bad weather is largely responsible for some recent weak economic data and should not lead the Federal Reserve to stop reducing a key stimulus program, a top central bank official said Monday. Instead, with economic growth still forecast to pick up this year, the Fed might need to quicken the pullback of its monthly bond-buying program, said Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. "In recent weeks, there has been a blizzard of economic reports, which have come in weaker than expected," Plosser said in a speech in Paris.

WASHINGTON - The day after Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, Federal Reserve policymakers hadn't yet grasped the scope of the financial storm blowing overhead. What was clear to them as they gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 16, was that economic conditions were worsening, according to transcripts released Friday of key Fed meetings that year. "The markets are continuing to experience very significant stresses this morning," said Ben S. Bernanke, then the Fed chairman, arriving late for the meeting, "and there are increasing concerns about the insurance company, AIG. " But Fed officials weren't ready for the unprecedented steps, such as bailing out the giant insurer, American International Group Inc., that they soon would be taking in a tumultuous year that transformed the central bank from obscure guardian of interest rates to aggressive fighter of financial crises.

WASHINGTON - Brutal winter weather contributed to a downturn in job growth and other economic data, raising questions about the strength of the recovery and testing the Federal Reserve's resolve in unwinding its key bond-buying stimulus program. Fed policymakers will have another month of data to consider when they next meet in mid-March. But if the views of John C. Williams are any indication, the Fed is likely to hold course. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, one of the Fed's 12 district banks, Williams has a seat at the mahogany table where top Fed officials meet regularly to discuss the economy and make policy decisions.

A top Federal Reserve official expects the central bank to continue reducing a key stimulus program even though he sees more modest growth this year than many analysts have projected. Jeffrey Lacker , president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., said Tuesday he supported the decision by central bank policymakers in December to start reducing the monthly bond-buying program. The Fed now is purchasing $65 billion a month in bonds after the Federal Open Market Committee voted to cut the amount by $10 billion at its December and January meetings.

WASHINGTON -- About 17% of workers expect to be laid off in the coming year, according to results of a newly launched consumer survey from the Federal Reserve. The figure for December was down from about 18% the previous month but up from about 15% in June, according to the initial results of the Survey of Consumer Expectations from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. About 22% of consumers expect to voluntarily switch jobs in the year ahead, down slightly from November but up from about 19% in June, the survey reported.

NEW YORK -- Federal agents Wednesday arrested a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man in Manhattan who authorities said planned to detonate what he thought was a massive bomb outside the New York Federal Reserve Bank building . The man, who was identified as Quazi Mohammad Reswanul Ahsan Nafis, claimed to have ties to Al Qaeda and was in New York trying to recruit people, according to a complaint. According to a statement released by the FBI, Nafis entered the United States on a student visa in January 2012 but his real purpose was to wage "jihad," or holy war. Unbeknownst to him, one of the people he tried to recruit was an FBI source, who met with Nafis several times through the summer and into the fall, the statement said.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve policymakers must “gird our loins” to start tapering the central bank's bond-buying program this fall after the drop in the unemployment rate to 7.4%, a top official said Monday. Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, likened the central bank's stimulus efforts to “a monetary Gordian Knot” -- a complex tangle of programs that must be “gingerly” unwound to avoid havoc in financial markets. The process needs to start soon, said Fisher, who in June said the Fed should not live in fear of pulling the plug on what he dubbed “monetary cocaine.” QUIZ: How well do you understand the Fed stimulus?

WASHINGTON - President Obama will nominate Stanley Fischer, the former head of the Bank of Israel, to be vice chair of the Federal Reserve, and also tapped two others for seats on the central bank's Board of Governors, the White House said. Lael Brainard, who stepped down in November as Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, was chosen to fill one of the vacant seats on the seven-member Fed board. Jerome H. Powell, a former Treasury official and investment banker who has served on the Fed board since 2012, will be renominated.

WASHINGTON - Now that the Federal Reserve has started to ease a key economic stimulus, the reins of managing monetary policy to finish the job soon will be turned over to Janet L. Yellen, the central bank's vice chair. She won't find it easy. Yellen, expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Saturday as the Fed's first female chief, will be leading a very different and potentially more fractious policymaking team at the central bank. A more divisive group could be particularly nettlesome as she tries to execute the complicated exit from the Fed's unprecedented actions to stimulate the economy after the Great Recession.